


Lethe

by shoelaces



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, will add more tags as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25998505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoelaces/pseuds/shoelaces
Summary: Le·the | A river in Hades whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past.Or: Five loses his memories instead of Vanya, and it falls to his siblings to raise a superpowered teenager in the 1960s, all whilst preserving their own new lives and preventing yet another apocalypse.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Sissy Cooper/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 150
Kudos: 599





	1. Bad Moon Rising

**Author's Note:**

> i enjoyed writing for the umbrella academy so much last year that once i saw season 2 and this idea struck, i couldn't look away. aside from the swap, the original premise hasn't changed except: vanya and diego have been in the 1960s longer and luther and klaus landed a little later on.

The end of the world may have been pretty much entirely her fault, but at least Vanya can cross  _ murdering all her siblings in a fiery apocalypse  _ off the list of things she’s blaming herself for.

“Vanya?” Sissy asks, all gentle concern and wide eyes. Sugar all the way through, Mom would have called her. “Is something wrong?”

What poor Sissy cannot possibly understand, because she is a nice woman who could not dream of her family history, is that Vanya’s world is both imploding and exploding at the same time because Five is standing on the side of the street.

“Stop the car,” Vanya blurts out, thoughts racing as she tries to figure out how the hell to explain  _ this. _ “Please stop the car.”

Sissy, bless her, pulls over immediately and she takes off like a bullet out of a gun.

“Five!” Vanya cries out, terrified he will see her and disappear into blue light. He has to know she’s not dangerous. He has to know she didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.

She thinks he might run, or look at her like she’s disgusting, maybe challenge her and ask where the hell she’s been.

What she doesn’t expect is for him to just shrink back, like he’s frightened but can’t run. He looks like an actual thirteen year old with his dirty school uniform and scraped knees. Vanya wants to wipe his face with a napkin.

“Five,” she says again. “I thought you were  _ dead _ .”

“You know me?” Five asks, sounding as scared as he does annoyed. “Where the hell have you been? Are you my  _ mother _ ?”

Vanya is so stunned for a moment that she can hardly speak. 

“I’m your  _ sister, _ ” she tells him, waiting for some kind of memory to dawn in his expression. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“I don’t-” Five blinks, jaw tight. “I don’t know where I was. I don’t know you.”

Before she can say anything else to him, Sissy is at her side, car keys dangling from one manicured finger, face creased with worry. Harlan is holding her other hand, watching them quietly.

“Vanya, who’s this?”

The lies she’s told Sissy about how she ended up running in front of her car and breaking her wrist are starting to stack up, but she can’t throw the poor woman in at the deep end with her 58 year old superpowered teenage brother from 2019.

“This is my brother,” Vanya says uselessly. “I thought he was...in New York still.” 

Not technically untrue. She means a New York years in the future that has been blown to smithereens, but lying by omission is a lesser sin, she supposes, as if her sins aren’t already stacked sky high.

“Oh!” Sissy exclaims, and she looks so delighted for Vanya to have found someone. “Hi, sweetie. What’s your name?”

It occurs to Vanya then, looking at Sissy in her little top with dogs on and her long blue skirt and perfect heels, that an amnesiac child called Five is not something she’s ready to have introduced into her life.

“He’s called Ben,” she says, and her heart aches at how long it’s been since she’s said that name. It feels like a tribute.

Five scowls at her, clearly about to comment on the fact that she had just called him Five at least three times, and she jumps back in to take control of the story.

“He...doesn’t remember me,” Vanya tells her, and her voice trembles. “I think maybe he’s hit his head.”

“I didn’t hit my head,” Five snaps. “I woke up like this.”

“Oh my,” Sissy bites her lip, anxious. “You poor boy.”

“I’m not going anywhere with people I don’t know,” Five protests. “You could tell me anything you wanted.”

“I would never lie to you,” Vanya insists, feeling a wave of guilt because she already has. What’s worse, she already knows she will continue to. She doesn’t know how to tell him everything he’s been through, especially at her hands, when he feels like just barely a teenager.

A little crease appears between Five’s eyebrows. Vanya knows it as the first red flag that he’s about to kick up a fight. Sissy and Harlan probably see it as a terrified child about to make a public scene.

“You have a scar on your shoulder from where our brother Diego bit you when you tackled him,” she says. “When we- when you were six.”

Five pushes back the collar of his uniform, crumpling the fabric in a way their father would scoff at, and frowns at the little silver thread of a scar across the fragile bone of his shoulder. Vanya remembers how it had bled, and how Diego had cried more than Five.

“That seems like proof she knows you, hon,” Sissy says, and Vanya tries not to laugh at anyone calling Five  _ hon _ . Even with his memories gone, he looks royally pissed off.

“Fine,” he says, and snaps his collar back into place. “I guess she is my long lost sister.”

Harlan shrinks back at his harsh tone, burying his face in Sissy’s soft skirt. 

“...Sorry,” Five mutters, haughtily apologetic. “I guess I’m having one of those days.”

“You must be very overwhelmed,” she says, though her arm is circled protectively around Harlan’s small frame. “You come back to ours for lunch and we’ll figure out what to do.”

Five, because he is presumably exhausted and terrified beyond belief, just nods tightly as Vanya’s mind races to get ahead of the curve. She’ll need to explain why her brother is wearing the uniform of an academy that does not exist, how Five could possibly have gotten from New York to Texas and lost his memory along the way, why she’s been unable to contact any of her other siblings. Five would have been better off stumbling into Allison’s path, if she’s still somewhere out there. She would have Rumoured him straight into her life, then tucked him up in bed with new pyjamas and a glass of warm milk.

“I’ll come,” he says stiffly. “Thanks.”

Sissy leads them back to the car and carefully puts on Harlan’s seatbelt, then clearly weighs up whether she needs to help Five as well. He does it himself before she can move, and Vanya hides her smile in the cuff of her shirt.

* * *

Carl is out when they get home, which Vanya is immensely glad for. She’s tense enough as it is, and although Sissy’s presence has the tendency to mellow her out, she can still feel the humming of her power under her skin. 

The first few months with Sissy had been exhausting. At the beginning, she was clearly all drained of whatever energy she had harnessed before and couldn’t so much as break a glass. She had curled up in the bed in Sissy’s spare room with her broken wrist cradled close and cried, Sissy watching anxiously framed in the slice of light at the doorway.

The irony of wishing her powers away wasn’t lost on her. She had made a small fortune off writing about not having them, about wanting them all her life, but when she caught her irises glowing silver in the mirror or when she shattered a wine glass on the counter then pretended she had simply dropped it, she had wanted more than anything to just be normal.

And then she had thought of Ben. Ben with his monsters under his skin, crying in his sleep and murmuring to himself in languages even their father couldn’t understand. The way he would flee a room at the sight of blood in case the monsters came out, sit on the gazebo alone talking them back. How he learned perfect control to strike evil with precision and protect everything good and gentle and soft, how he had been so focused on calming a woman terrified by them that it had been easy for the man who had slipped past their other siblings to sneak up behind him and slit his throat.

If he could harness such violence and still be the person he had been, she could learn to control herself too.

When Sissy and Harlan were asleep and Carl was out on a bender, she would go to the junkyard near the farm and practice using her powers on just one target, shattering windows of old cars and throwing metal heavier than her as if it was lighter than a feather. Ben would have been proud. 

She’s been keen to prove herself to her siblings, show them that she can control it, that it was all just a freak accident, but Five doesn’t even know himself right now so she tucks her pride back in and focuses on looking after him.

He hovers in the hallway of the Cooper household and Vanya is struck by just how obviously he doesn’t belong. She wonders if she looked like that when she arrived. She feels more like she belongs now, wearing Harlan’s love like a badge of honour.

“You said we have a brother called Diego?” Five asks, whilst Sissy is in the kitchen making him a peanut butter sandwich. Vanya thought it best not to ask for the marshmallows and to hope Five just doesn’t remember his proclivities.

“Our dad had seven kids,” she says vaguely. “You, me, Diego, Allison, Luther, Klaus, and...well, our other brother died.”

“Oh,” Five says, blinking a bit. “Well, I’d still like to know his name.”

_ Crunch time, _ Vanya thinks, then checks Sissy is still bustling around the kitchen out of earshot and says, “His name was Ben.”

“You said that was  _ my  _ name,” Five hisses. “Are you lying about who you are or are you projecting your weird unresolved dead brother issues all over me?”

“One minute!” Sissy calls.

“I’m trying not to terrify Sissy by telling her your name is  _ Five _ ,” Vanya whispers back. “I’ll explain everything later.”

Five opens his mouth then closes it again, stunned into silence for the first time since she found him.

“Later,” she repeats, just as Sissy comes in.

“Lunch!” Sissy says brightly, putting down plates in front of each of them. “Harlan wants to eat in his room, it’s just us.”

Vanya smiles warmly at her. As difficult as this new situation is to navigate, she likes it when Sissy is around.

“Thanks,” Five says tightly. He won’t look at her. She hopes he isn’t too mad.

“Vanya, honey, do you think you should try to reach out to the rest of your family? Or his school? Let them know where your brother is, they must be worried sick.”

“I’ll try and reach out,” Vanya says, and this time she really means it. If Five is here, she’s not the only survivor like she’s been fearing. Her other siblings could be out there somewhere, probably in the same city, thinking the exact same about her. They could have been here for years. She could have passed them in the street.

Five says nothing, but takes a bite out of his sandwich like he’s imagining it’s her throat. For someone who genuinely believes himself to be thirteen, he’s shockingly aggressive. 

Then again, she thinks, as a flash of Allison gasping for breath with a cut throat burns through her mind, she supposes she can’t throw stones. She has wreaked more destruction than he ever will, and he’s saved her from it, even if he doesn’t know that.

“Can we go for a walk?” Five asks eventually. “I...want some air. And I guess I have questions.” He says the last word very sharply as he gazes at her. Clearly, his subtlety is gone with his memories.

“The rain should clear up soon,” Sissy says a little uncertainly. “Until it does, you can try and find some new clothes? Carl will be home soon and...I think he’d enjoy getting to talk with you.”

Five fiddles with his uniform uncertainly, and Vanya knows that he doesn’t want to take it off, that he wears it like a suit of armour even when he doesn’t know what he’s protecting himself from, but says nothing. He needs a change anyway. She nearly killed him in that uniform. Her own suit is folded at the back of a closet and she has no plans to let it ever see the light of day again.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “Thanks.”

“You can look in the closet in the room on the left at the end of the hall. We got some that are too big for Harlan, and some old stuff of Carl’s we keep for him when he’s a lil’ older.”

Five hurries off without another word.

“He’s a funny kid, isn’t he?” Sissy muses once the door has closed. “Real polite, but he seems so uncomfortable.”

“Mhm,” Vanya says vaguely. “That’s just what he’s like.”

“We can take him to a hospital in the morning,” she says. “I didn’t want to overwhelm him, but we can get him checked out and keep looking for your other siblings.”

“Right,” Vanya replies. “Yeah. Um, he doesn’t like hospitals.” She knows this won’t work long, that she can’t keep an amnesiac child away from the hospital forever, but she can’t let them see him. There is no record of his existence, and he’s never been reported as a missing person. Social services will take him away before she can say a word, and she can’t lose him again.

She realises, sickly, that they are going to have to run.

“Sissy,” she says thickly, because she has to say this  _ now _ . “Thank you for taking me in. And for looking after my brother.”

“It’s nothing, honey,” she says softly. “Thank you for staying.”

“I’ve been so lost,” she carries on. “God, Sissy, you found me on that street and I was a mess! And you could have left me at the hospital, but you took me home and bought me clothes and gave me food and trusted me with Harlan!”

“He loves you,” Sissy interjects. “Vanya, you know you’ve done as much for me as I have for you.”

“That can’t be true.”

“You have no idea-” Sissy clears her throat. “You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about packing a bag and taking Harlan and just running for the fucking hills.”

“Carl-” Vanya starts, concern slipping into her voice.

“Is a lovely man!” Sissy says quickly, a little too desperate. “But fools rush in, and I shouldn’t have married him as young as I did. I’ve barely left Dallas in years! I feel like I’m going to rot in this house. And then  _ you  _ show up.”

“Sissy, what are you saying?” Vanya whispers.

“I’m saying thank you,” Sissy tells her. “For reminding me that there’s more out there than people like Carl doing jobs like he does and hating them like he does.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmurs.

“I’d love to hear you play your violin sometime,” she says. “Whenever you’re ready.”

There's a long, pale blonde hair stuck to her lip. Vanya wants to gently brush it off, but in the eternity that stretches out around them at the kitchen table as she stares, the door clicks open and Carl thuds in and there is no sound of rain behind him.

“You take your brother for a walk,” Sissy says quickly, her face neutral again. That smile she only smiles for Vanya is gone. “You can take the station wagon. I’ll explain the situation to Carl.”

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you again, Sissy. For everything.”

“For you? Anything.” Sissy says it like it’s a joke, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Five walks back out into the corridor then, wearing an old-looking button up and a pair of trousers slightly too long. If he didn’t look thirteen before, he does now.

“Come on,” she says. “I’ll drive you down to the lake. We can catch up.”

“Oh, we have a  _ lot  _ to catch up on,” Five says darkly. 

Behind them, Carl gives Sissy a questioning look and she presses a finger to her lips.

Vanya takes the keys and lets Five follow her out to the station wagon. He climbs into the passenger seat and watches her silently as she starts the engine. She gets the feeling he’s still dwelling on his own name.

“We’re not staying,” she tells him. She knows that she can’t tell Sissy this because if she does, anything Sissy says will crumble her resolve and make her stay. That isn’t an option anymore. 

“What?” Five says. “Where are we going?”

“Looking for our siblings,” she says. “I have a theory.”

“I didn’t consent to this,” Five snaps. “This is child abduction.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m really sorry. If it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure you’d do the same for me if our positions were reversed. And you'd probably be a lot ruder.”

“So now you’re just  _ agreeing _ that you’re abducting me.”

“You’ll understand,” she says with all the confidence she doesn’t feel. “When you get your memories back, you’ll understand.”

Then before he can argue any more, she drives down the dirt road, lets Sissy’s beautiful little house be swallowed up by the dark, and prays she’ll be back soon.


	2. Voodoo Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was not anticipating chapter 1 to garner the response it did, thank you so much for all your kind words! i hope you enjoy this chapter too

“How old am I?” Five asks Vanya, partly in a half-hearted attempt to distract her from looking so sad.

From the time he spent in Sissy’s bathroom staring at his reflection and waiting for a spark of recognition, he’s estimating somewhere between twelve and fifteen. Some part of him feels like he should be much older than that, because he’s tired right down to the bone, but mirrors don’t lie. 

Vanya looks over at him for a long moment like she’s trying to figure out what he wants to hear.

“Thirteen,” she says stiffly, though not unkindly. “Closer to fourteen now, I suppose.”

“That’s a hell of an age gap,” he replies, and Vanya looks some cross between amused and a little insulted. “We’re not a very normal family, are we?”

Vanya stops the car on the side of the little dirt road, puts her head on the wheel, and makes a strange snorting sound.

“Um,” he says. “Are you laughing or crying?”

“Oh god,” she says, and lifts her head so he can see her smile and her bright, watery eyes. “Sorry. It’s a cry-laugh situation. That’s what Allison would call it.”

“I feel like I’m missing a lot,” he tells her. “As in, very important context.”

“You don’t even talk like a kid,” she says thoughtfully. “You really did a number on yourself, huh?”

“I guess I did,” he shrugs. “I mean, I didn’t wake up chained to a wall in some creep’s basement so I don’t think I got attacked.”

“That seems unlikely,” Vanya nods. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“Waking up,” Five tells her, staring at his laces. The knot is complicated. He has no idea where he learned to do that. “In an alley. Then I went straight out onto the street, and then you came.”

“The alley,” Vanya says, looking interested now. “Near where we found you? The same street as Tipman’s diner?”

“Yeah,” he says, unnerved. “How did you know that?”

“That’s where I was too,” she says quietly, looking very pale.

“What?” Five has just about had enough of the cryptic bullshit now. “I thought you just lived with Sissy.”

“I’ve only been there for a few months,” Vanya admits, looking embarrassed. “It’s possible I get attached very quickly.”

“I thought you and her-”

“That was her husband we saw,” she says tightly. “Carl.”

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence before he speaks again.

“You woke up in the alley,” he says. “What were you doing there?”

Vanya looks exhausted. He feels like the simple question has unravelled her, like there’s too much behind it to even begin to answer. It’s a little irritating because  _ he’s  _ the one with amnesia, and he feels like he’s not really asking that much of her in the grand scheme of things, but she looks like the world is on her shoulders. 

“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,” he grumbles. “I could jump out of this car, you know. Run for the hills. Play the amnesiac card to some nice couple and hope they take sympathy and adopt me. They probably wouldn’t act so weird at least.”

“Why haven’t you?” Vanya turns to look at him for a moment.

“Eyes on the road,” he snaps, and he’s a little surprised by himself for a moment. “And only in hope that you’ll get me to one of our more well-adjusted siblings and they’ll tell me everything.”

“Well, you’ll have no luck there,” Vanya deadpans. “We don’t have any well-adjusted siblings.”

“They worse than you?”

“You are so  _ rude _ ,” she says, mildly disbelievingly. Then, darkly, “No, I think I’m probably the worst of us.”

He frowns at her, but doesn’t say anything. She may have sort of abducted him, and she’s being goddamn cagey, but she doesn’t seem like she could be the worst of anything. She still has to roll her sleeves up because her arms are too short. He thinks her shoes might be Harlan’s.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re headed?” Five asks. “You’re not planning on driving all the way to New York, are you? If that’s where you said everyone is.”

“We’re going back to the alley,” she says. “I have an idea. Sort of.”

“You don’t sound very confident.”

“It’s a little crazy,” she admits. “So you don’t know who you are, but you remember that New York is a long drive?”

“I guess,” he says. “I feel like I know a lot.”

This is something of an understatement. Since the panic has ebbed away and he’s been sitting with his thoughts in the quiet, he’s noticed an almost overwhelming flood of information in his head. He knows that New York is far away, and he knows that summers here are hot. He knows exactly how the engine of the car he is sitting in works, and the formulas that explain how it spits out fumes. Everything is in there, and he feels like he’s trying to organise it all into some kind of story that explains how he ended up in the alley, but none of it links back.

He also knows that this feels more than what any average thirteen year old knows.

When he had first woken up, and was still lying on his back with his mind totally fractured from his body, he had felt a lot older. He supposes now that it was no kind of fair judgement, because it’s not like he had any memories of adults or teenagers to draw from and compare to, but in those first few moments, he had been positive he was an adult. More than that, he’d felt  _ old _ . It was only when he had walked out into the street and seen people’s concerned gazes, and that he was so much smaller than the passers-by, that it had clicked in his head he was so young.

“You do,” Vanya says, and he searches her tone for bitterness but just finds fondness. “You’re a right little know-it-all.”

“I thought so,” he says, and squints at her in the failing light. It’s getting darker fast. “But I don’t know anything about my life.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “Sometimes I wish I could forget it all.”

For a moment she looks like she might cry. He gives her a few beats of silence just in case she does before pressing on.

“It was that bad at home?”

“It was complicated,” Vanya says sharply, then softens. “Sorry. I’m not used to talking to you...like this.”

“Are we usually yelling at each other or something?” Five frowns. He may not remember anything, but he likes Vanya. She doesn’t seem like someone he would fight with all the time.

“Nothing like that,” she says quickly. “You just usually don’t ask me questions. You tell me things, I ask you questions, you don’t answer, and then a lot of crazy sh- crazy stuff happens.”

“Ask fewer questions then,” he says without thinking, and then almost bites his tongue off trying to retroactively stop the words.

Vanya snorts.

“I’m thirteen,” he says, a little surprised by his own sharpness. “You should be able to manage me.”

“No one can manage you,” she tells him, and then, “Huh.”

“What?” Five asks, and briefly wonders if her silence is punishing him before he looks through the windshield and sees a man standing in the road. There’s an ice cream van parked haphazardly off the side, which under any other circumstances would take all of his attention.

What he’s zeroed in on is that the man is holding a gun. The second thing he thinks is that he knows exactly how to use it. He can imagine the weight of it in his hands, feel the cold metal, knows that if this man doesn’t adjust his stance then the kickback will hurt him.

“Get down,” Vanya says, quietly but firmly. “Five, get down.”

“I-”

“Get  _ down, _ ” she hisses, and then unclips his seatbelt and pushes him so he’s crouched in the leg room under the dashboard. 

Before he can protest any further or ask her what the hell she’s doing, she’s out of the truck with the door slamming hard behind her, and he’s completely frozen with fear. It feels embarrassing to acknowledge even though it’s obviously something to be scared of. He clasps his hands to stop the shaking anyway.

Outside the station wagon, there’s a round of gunfire, and his heart drops into his stomach. His sister, who he’s only just found, is so goddamn small and gentle. There is no way she can get out of this.

Everything in his body is screaming to get out and help, but Vanya told him to stay put and it occurs to him, grimly, that someone will need to tell the police what the man with the gun looked like.

“Please be okay,” he whispers to himself, staring at the dust on the floor of the truck. “Come on, come back.”

And then, as if some divine entity is hearing him and listening to his begging, as if he has ripped back the night with his words, bright white light is spilling across the sky and lighting up the station wagon. 

He flattens himself further down in case it’s illuminated his own silhouette, and stares into the glow. There’s a strange humming noise in the air, and he can feel his head start to hurt. There’s a raw panic building in the back of his throat, like he knows this is something to be afraid of.

It just doesn’t make any  _ sense _ .

It must only be a few seconds before the light fades out, even if it feels like a lifetime. The dark is horribly silent again. No gunshots but no Vanya either. Five can’t move.

Then suddenly Vanya is pulling open the driver’s door hard, and she looks completely unscathed. Not a scratch on her.

Her eyes are glowing silver.

He stumbles back, jamming his spine hard against his own door.

“What the fuck?” Five hisses, feeling a little like his brain might start coming out of his ears. “What’s wrong with your eyes?!”

Vanya blinks hard and when she opens her eyes, they’re a deep brown again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t hurt them!” Vanya blurts out, seeming horrified. “I swear I didn’t hurt them, we just have to move fast before-”

The door behind Five is ripped open and he falls hard onto the dirt path below. From his upside down vantage point, he can see a man staring down at him. It’s not the same man who was on the road, but he has the same nearly white hair and pale eyes.

Very slowly, he sits up.

“Leave him alone,” Vanya says from her seat. She sounds terrified. “He’s just a kid!”   


“You and I both know that that’s not true,” says the man.

Five doesn’t have time to process what he means before a gun is pushed right in front of his head. He can feel the cold metal of the barrel against his forehead now, exactly as he was sure he knew the feeling when he first saw it.

He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be somewhere else, lost in the cornfields around them where no one will be able to see him. He can visualise it now and-

And he’s there.

His bones feel like they’re on fire, and his skin is prickling, but he’s surrounded by the corn and there is no gun in his face and he is  _ alive. _

“Holy shit,” he murmurs, then his knees give out and he drops onto the ground. He feels very very sick, and his heart is racing so hard it might burst out of his chest. He isn’t sure if he can breathe, but then there’s another round of gunshots right over his head, so he supposes he’s going to have to.

He’s trying to calculate his chances of making it into the treeline (and finds that when he thinks about the trajectory of a bullet, hundreds of numbers swirl in his head) and the ethics of leaving Vanya behind (and finds that he desperately does not want to do that), when there is a high-pitched whine of a sound that echoes across the whole field before a tremendous rush of air flattens him and all the corn around him into the dirt.

He’s lying there, trying to catch his bearings and process the ridiculous amount of bullshit that has just been presented to him, when Vanya finds him.

“Holy shit,” she says. “Oh my god, Five.”

“You did that,” he mumbles. “You did something.”

“Yeah,” she says. She sounds dreadful. “I did. Desperate times, right?”

She sounds, weirdly, like she wants him to tell her it’s okay.

“And me,” he mumbles. “What did I do? I just wanted to get away, I just-”

“Yeah,” she says miserably. “That’s how you figured it out the first time too.”

And he faints dead away in the dirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! halfway through writing this chapter, my laptop with all my notes for this fic packed up and died on me so bear with me whilst i try and get those back. hopefully it won't be any problem
> 
> i'm at ghostmontygreen on tumblr now! feel free to come and chat to me about anything tua!


	3. I Fall to Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! this was meant to be posted a while ago but i moved house, had wifi issues, am preparing to start a new job, and watched 50 episodes of a netflix show in 10 days. you know how it is. anyway, diego's perspective!

  
Diego has this _itch_ at the back of his brain.

It comes and goes with his moods, and sometimes it’s gone when he’s medicated out of his mind, but he prefers the itch to that heavy sickness.

The itch will be scratched, he theorises, if he can find his siblings. And he can’t find his siblings as long as he’s locked up here. They will be alive, and they will be looking for him, he tells himself every night, lying under the stiff sheets. The only thing wrong with him is being here, and out in the world again, he will be a hero.

This is what he tells himself. 

It would be, quite simply, a sin to not change a world he knows how to change. This is what Dad has always told him, that there were those among them who could make the world better, that this is not him because he let Ben die all on his own, and as long as he keeps being the kid who hides in his mother’s skirts and can barely get through a sentence, the world will spin madly on and things will only get worse.

Contrary to that, there is Lila Pitts.

Lila seems like the kind of person who would still be standing if the world ended, brushing ashes off her jacket and making a pithy joke about the heat. She thinks the fact that he is a hopeless fuck up makes him vastly more interesting, and she laughs like a drain at everything that makes him want to cry.

He likes having her around. She seems crazy in the same way that he is, not sad and slow and drugged up to the eyeballs like everyone else here. Just like she’s in the wrong place and the world is a bit of a joke. Another day of the bullshit, she would chirp every morning as they were served breakfast, and the cracks in his dry lips would sting as he smiled.

Sometimes he thinks that if it wasn’t for Lila, he would never speak again. He would never smile again either, just wait in this awful prison for Five or the end to come.

“What’s got you so miserable?” Lila asks one morning when he’s lost in thought about it all. “You look like you swallowed a wasp.”

“Are you just being nice to me?” Diego asks. He likes to think he’d be tougher than this, but he doesn’t have much of a filter these days. “Do you think they’re dead?”

“I’m not that nice,” she says flatly. “I think you’re unwell. I have no qualms telling you that. But if your siblings aren’t all imaginary friends you’ve made up, and frankly I don’t think you’re creative enough to do that, I think they’re alive.”

“Why?” There’s the tiniest crack of vulnerability in his voice. He sees her notice it, hook her claws into it, though she doesn’t hurt him.

“All these people you describe to me,” she says, and taps a toothpick against her teeth. “And you think you’d be the sole survivor? If you made it, they’re probably thriving.”

“Then why haven’t they come for me?” Another wobble.

“I don’t know,” Lila says, softening slightly. “Maybe they’re wondering why you haven’t come for them.” 

The thought makes him want to crumble because he’s supposed to be the hero, and if they need him then he should be there, but it’s a better explanation than being left to rot here.

“Thanks, Lila,” he mutters, and turns back to the bracelet he’s threading. Shiny black beads on a silver thread of wire. It’s simple and bright and elegant. He thinks Allison would like it. Crafts may not be any real way to fix what’s wrong with the people here, especially him, but he it’s easier not to think of that when he’s focusing on threading each bead through. Besides, it keeps his hands busy. 

“You look constipated when you try that hard,” Lila tells him, which somewhat breaks the spell but he has six siblings so he’s never been one to crumble at an insult. “Are you still thinking about them?”

“You’re an only child, aren’t you?” Diego says dryly.

“Yep,” she says, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “My mum travels way too much to have any more children.”

There’s a brief flicker of something strange in her expression, but he doesn’t push it. Unlike him, she’s here for a reason. He’s never asked, because he’s a little scared of the answer, but if she wasn’t mad when she came to this place, the last few months will have done the trick.

“It shows,” he replies. “Mommy issues.”

She hisses at him, but grins.

“Hey,” she says, then kicks her leg up onto the table with a thud. “If you’re still sulking, I snuck food out of the mess hall again.”

He turns back to her with a smile, and she takes a rasher of bacon out of her shoe. It’s disgusting, but he had been too sick at breakfast to eat anything, and his stomach is punishing him now, so he takes it anyway.

“Hargreeves,” a voice snaps, and Diego jumps and nearly chokes on the bacon. 

His heart is racing. He doesn’t want to be punished. If they take him from Lila, his life raft, if they put him in that awful room again, he doesn’t know if he can survive that. A lifetime of running into danger, into the path of bullets, into flames, and nothing terrifies him more than the doctors here and their needles. 

His vision blurs as he tears up, and Lila’s face wobbles in front of him. He thinks he might be sick or pass out.

“You have a visitor,” the man continues, and he feels the tension rush away, although it leaves him shaking and the nausea clings on like cigarette smoke.

“O-okay,” he manages, and the guard scoffs before stepping out into the hall and waiting for him to scurry after him. Lila raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.

Diego follows on trembling legs, watching the hallways bend around him, and tries to remember if he always reacted this drastically to things. That world feels a very long time ago now, and the irony of that is not lost on him. It hasn’t even happened yet, whatever the scars have to say about it.

It only strikes him in the moments before he opens the door to the visiting room that there are only five other people on this Earth who could plausibly be visiting him. 

He isn’t sure whether to be thrilled or terrified. He has missed them so much it’s like missing a limb, but he’s not even sure if he can hold a conversation with anyone other than Lila and her wild topic changes and logical leaps anymore. A different voice in his ear, different things to process, it all sounds like almost too much to bear.

It’s a cruel thing to think, especially when he misses him so much, but he hopes it’s not Klaus. Klaus is something of an assault on the senses at all times, and he’s not sure he can handle all of that right now.

It’s not Klaus, thankfully.

It’s Allison, sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair like it was built for her as a throne. He still feels like a wreck, but the easy calmness radiating off her is helping.

“Hey, Diego,” she says gently, and she looks so goddamn worried it nearly takes him apart. “Saw you in the news.”

“Allison,” he replies, and sits down with his hands neatly folded in his lap so she can’t see how bitten down his nails are. “Hi.”

“It’s so good to see you,” she says, and her face breaks into a proper smile like this whole time she’s been afraid it wasn’t really him. “I thought I might be the only one left.”

“The others aren’t with you?”

“No.” Allison shakes her head. “You’re the first I’ve found...any trace of.”

“Oh,” he says weakly. “Okay.”

“Are you alright, Diego?” Her face softens again. “How long have you been here?”

“Um,” he hums, adding up the days that have melted together in his head. “Just short of six months, I think. I got here in May.”

“In this hospital or-” Allison lowers her voice. “In this decade?”

“Both,” he says, with a twinge of embarrassment. “I got put here the day I landed.”

“Diego,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “What did you do?”

“That’s none of your business,” he says coolly, because it seems like the kind of thing the old Diego would say.

She raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not crazy,” he finishes a bit weakly. “I was trying to do something right.”

“I’m sure,” she says, her voice even. He can’t tell what that means. Then, quickly changing the topic, “I had to Rumour my way in here, you know. They don’t want my...type visiting.”

“Oh,” he says grimly. He’s not sure what to say to that, other than that it makes him angry. Allison can handle herself, but she shouldn’t have to, and not everyone is that lucky. “I’m sorry.”

“Have you been okay? I know it can’t have been easy for you either.”

“I sleep with a knife under my pillow. Snuck it past them. I’m fine.”

“You ever had to use it?” Allison chews on a nail.

“Hand to hand usually does the trick.”

Her face falls briefly, but she composes herself.

“Are you here to break me out?” Diego whispers, eyeing the guard in the corner of the room.

Allison hesitates.

“I’m not crazy,” he repeats.

“I know, I know,” she says quickly. “But I don’t know where to take you.”

“Where are you living? You don’t look like you’re living on the streets, just take me to your house.”

“That’s the thing,” she bites her lip. “I don’t know what to tell my husband.”

“Your husband?!” Diego says a little too loudly. The man in the doorway shushes him, looks at him like he’s dirt.

“I’ve been here a while,” Allison says. She looks guilty. “Diego, I fell in love. I was lonely.”

“Do you love him?”

“Of course,” she says simply. “His name is Raymond. He’s a civil rights activist and a total book nerd. You’d get along. Under better circumstances.”

“Circumstances where we’re not trying to leave this century,” he hisses. “Are you just gonna leave him here?”

“That’s not…” Allison looks upset. “I thought we were never going back. I thought it was just me.”

“What about _Claire_?”

“That’s enough, Diego,” she says firmly, and he’s never been able to argue much with her like that. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay? We’ll figure it out.”

Diego is still shaken, and this hasn’t exactly been the reunion he had been imagining. It’s not Allison’s fault at all, but there’s frustration running through his veins, and when he’s frustrated, he gets stubborn.

“I don’t want to go without Lila,” he says. It’s not a lie, he realises that the second it’s out of his mouth. Lila makes him feel secure, and leaving this place without her would be like jumping into the ocean without a lifejacket. Besides, no one should have to stay here, ill or not.

“Lila?” Allison frowns. “Is she...a patient here?”

“Yes! But she’s like me, she doesn’t need to be here.”

“Right,” Allison says uncertainly. “How do you know that?”

“Because we’ve been locked up here together six months and no one here has any privacy.”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “Getting you out and managing them searching for you is already going to be hard. Two people...what if her family looks for her?”

“Her mom isn’t looking, she told me that,” Diego argues. “Hey, if you got married-”

“Stop holding that against me.”

“I should be able to bring her.”

“Do you love her?” Allison asks.

Diego hesitates. His feelings on Lila are as complicated as Lila herself, and wrapped up in a cocktail of drugs and loneliness. He knows this. He’s just not great at telling his common sense that. 

`’I love her,” he says.

“Oh, Diego,” she sighs, in that way that reminds him of their mom and makes his heart ache. “Alright. I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“Visiting time’s nearly up,” the man says. “Say your goodbyes, Hargreeves.”

A lump lodges in his throat thinking about Allison leaving again when he’s only just found her. He may have been distracted, but seeing her again is so good. He doesn’t want her to go.

“Come back soon?” Diego asks her.

“Really soon,” she says, and kisses her cheek. “You sit tight, yeah?”

He nods, not trusting himself to speak without stuttering.

Allison squeezes his hand, then slips back out through the door. He listens to the sound of her heels clicking on the linoleum fading away for a long moment until he returns to the mess hall.

-

“So your sister’s real then?” Lila asks, biting on the end of a pencil hard. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“I keep telling you I’m not crazy,” he snaps.

“You _are_ a stalker, though,” she says, taking the pencil out of her mouth and pointing the chewed down end at him. “You can’t deny that.”

“For good reason!”

“Whatever. Is she coming back or not?”

“Yeah, she’s coming,” Diego says proudly. “And we’ll take you with us.”

She gawps at him.

“If you want?” A little awkward.

“Shit, yeah,” she laughs. “Get me out of here, man.”

“Then we’ll do it,” he says assuredly. “We won’t have to stay here any more.”

“Don’t you get all knight in shining armour on me,” she grumbles. “I could have skipped town without your help.”

“But you didn’t,” Diego points out, smiling glibly.

“Never mind, maybe I can’t even tolerate you long enough to do this.”

“Sorry!” He’s laughing now, knows she’s joking. “Sorry. Please come.”

“Course I’m coming,” she says easily. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replies, and smiles at her. She smiles back. It feels electric.

“I’ll be counting down the hours,” she says.

“Soon,” he tells her. “Just wait. Allison always comes through.”

That night, he goes to bed in his room and feels comfortable for the first night since he arrived.

Allison, true to her word always, does not keep him waiting long. 

That same night, his door is busted open and she’s standing in the thin slice of light from the hall, still in her perfect dress and shoes. She might be his hero.

“Hey,” she says. “We don’t have long. Where’s your friend?”

“What the hell did you do?” Diego mumbles, still half asleep because he’s already taken the pills they give him at night. “Did you hurt security?”

“What? Diego, who do you think I am? I Rumoured them.”

“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Lila’s in the other wing. Room 8.”

“Alright,” she says. “You’re gonna have to lead the way.”

He stumbles out of the sheets and sees her wince a little at the state of his pajamas and the hard little bed.

As they hurry towards the wing where the women stay, he tries to steady himself. Allison is a mother hen, and he can tell she’s already worrying about him. He doesn’t want her to. Sympathy humiliates him.

‘So where are we going? Did you explain to your husband that you were breaking your brother, who is clearly not related to you, out of an insane asylum he got stuck in because he thought JFK was in danger?”

“Hah,” Allison says. “No, I did not. I told him I got in touch with a family member and I’d be away for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”

“That sounds ominous.” Diego turns into the wing Lila is kept in, waits for Allison to duck into the alcove next to him. “Do you know where or are we just hightailing it out of here?”

“I know where,” she says calmly. “We’ll talk about that later.”

That worries him a bit, but he nods and focuses on the task at hand.

“Lila’s room is at the end,” he says.

“Cool,” Allison replies, then grins. “Run.”

They take off down the hall, quiet but fast, just like they’re trained to do. 

Diego would like to be the hero in this moment, at least partially to impress Lila, but his brain is still trying to catch up to his body, so he just lurks awkwardly behind Allison whilst she gets the door open, and when Lila bursts through it like a bullet out of a gun, all he can do is smile.

“You weren’t bluffing,” she says cheerfully, although there’s a hint of surprise in her expression. “And you must be the sister.”

“I imagine you have some questions,” Allison deadpans, right as an alarm starts going off. “But we should run.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Lila says, then howls like a wolf, which makes Diego jump out of his skin, and takes off down the hall.

“Okay,” Allison says, grinning at him. “I see it now.”

They hurry after her, turn the corner, and come face to face with a guard.

“Aw, fuck,” Lila says, planting her feet on the ground like she can build herself into it. “You plan for this?”

“No, Lila,” Allison says flatly. “I just assumed there would be no issues at all and no one would see a thing.”

“Ladies,” Diego interrupts.

They both turn and glare at him.

“Point taken,” he mutters.

The guard opens his mouth to speak, but Allison gets there first.

“I heard a rumour you let us go,” she says.

The guard’s eyes turn white, and he walks away like a zombie. Diego knows that feeling. Their father used to make Allison practice on him all the time when he was misbehaving.

“Woah,” Lila says, though she doesn’t look as surprised as he would expect. It’s kind of just how she works. “What was that?!”

“I’ll explain later,” Allison says. “We have to go now.”

Thankfully, security in this place has always been shitty (Diego would have fled sooner if he had anywhere to go), and five minutes later they’re in the car and he is watching the buttery yellow light of house windows fly past him and feeling like the world is so big he could dissolve into it.

“You two need to lie low,” Allison says. “No stunts. Diego, I’m talking to you, pay attention.”

“Yes, moooooom,” he drawls.

“On second thoughts, maybe I’ll just lock you in,” she sighs. “Be thankful it was me that found you. Five would have left your sorry ass.”

“He loves me really,” Diego murmurs.

“Five, huh?” Lila raises an eyebrow.

“What about him?” Diego asks sharply.

“It’s a weird name, is all,” she says simply.

“Oh. I guess.” Diego settles back into his seat.

A few minutes later, Allison parks the car by an alley that makes something itch at the back of his brain, begging to be remembered.

“Recognise this?” Allison asks. She’s smiling, but she looks a little anxious behind it.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s where I...arrived.”

“Huh.” Lila deadpans.

“Later,” he says. 

“Go to the door as fast as you can,” she says. “We don’t need anyone spotting you right now.”

On a whim, Diego grabs Lila’s hand, feels it warm and strong in his own, and takes off out of the door.

Allison joins them moments later, and leads them up to a ratty little apartment door.

“I assume you met whoever lives here?” Diego asks. “And they’re not likely to kill and eat us?”

“I met him earlier,” Allison says, rolling her eyes. “And I seriously doubt this man could kill a fly.”

When the man in question opens the door, Diego’s first thought is that she has a point. He’s a small, weedy guy wearing a shirt that looks a little too big for him, and earnestness shines out of his face, even though he looks afraid.

“Hi, Elliott,” Allison says. “I’ve got my brother. And...a guest.”

“Right,” he says, dark eyes flickering back and forth between them. He looks like he’s wishing he had a weapon. “Uh, there’s been a development.”

“Elliott! You said we could stay.” Allison narrows her eyes in an exasperated mom-type way, but Diego can see the anxiety in her expression.

“You can!” Elliott says quickly, eyes huge. “I just, uh-”

“Allison?” A familiar voice says from somewhere inside the apartment.

“Oh my god,” Allison whispers. “Vanya?”

Vanya steps into the doorway. She’s the same as Diego remembers her, small and dressed plainly, her hair loose, but suddenly he doesn’t feel safe away from the ward. She hurt him. She brought fire and destruction and pain, and he’s scared. There’s nothing he hates more than being scared.

He shrinks back a little, behind Allison and Lila, watches her face for any flicker of anger, but he only sees sorrow.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem,” Vanya says, then cringes. “Not me, I mean-”

“Vanya,” Allison says gently.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she says, and tears rise in her eyes. “You have no idea how sorry I am, but I had to bring Five here to keep him safe, he doesn’t remember anything, but he’s here now, so you can ask me to leave and I’ll go-”

“Five doesn’t remember?” Allison asks.

“Come in,” Elliott interjects. “I don’t think this is a discussion for a hallway.”

Diego takes a deep breath, looks at Vanya’s tear-stained cheeks and Allison’s earnest eyes, and steps inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's not much five and/or vanya in this chapter, sorry! it's just setup to start getting everyone in the same place. they'll both be back properly in the next one. thank you for reading and as usual, i'm on tumblr at ghostmontygreen and i promise i'm friendly

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments and kudos are always always appreciated and/or you can let me know what you thought on tumblr @grace-hargreeves


End file.
